Sources of Vitamin D

Sources of vitamin D are available in several different ways where you can adjust your intake as needed.

The most natural of these is to spend some time out in the sun and let your body produce it for itself. But due to modern largely indoor lifestyles and the risk of skin cancer, this is not always the most feasible option.

Other sources of vitamin D can help supplement your time in the sun so you can make sure you are getting enough of this very important vitamin.

Besides the sun, good sources of vitamin D include artificial sunlight (tanning beds), vitamin D supplement pills, fortified processed foods, and foods with a lot of naturally occurring vitamin D, such as eggs and fish.

Let’s start out with the easiest way of getting in some extra vitamin D:

Supplement pills are convenient, easy to find, and fairly cheap when compared to, say, a tanning bed session. They also help you regulate how much vitamin D you are getting as you can see the number of IUs (International Units) in each pill right on the bottle.

Remember, a healthy dose of vitamin D is between 1000 and 3000 IUs of vitamin D daily. This may seem like a lot, but the health benefits from getting enough vitamin D in your life can be absolutely amazing.

Another way to get your vitamin D is to use a tanning bed. This is an especially good option in the winter when in most latitudes, even if you go outside, the sun’s rays are coming in at such a weak angle that your body still cannot process the UV radiation into vitamin D.

Spending a little time in a tanning bed on a regular basis can help keep you saturated with the proper level of vitamin D, which in turn can keep you feeling good.

Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) is now coming to be commonly associated with vitamin d deficiency as well as lack of sunlight and a tanning bed is a great way to deal with both of those problems at the same time.

You might also be surprised by how many natural sources of vitamin D there are already in your diet.

If you eat fish on a regular basis, you are probably getting your fair share of vitamin D, as it collects in the fatty tissues of fish. Fatty fish are best for this purpose as the more fatty tissues a fish has the more vitamin D it can store.

Good examples of fatty fish rich in vitamin D include:

• Salmon

• Herring

• Sardines

• Tuna

• Mackerel

• Catfish

Eggs and beef liver are also great natural
sources of vitamin D and easy to add into just about any diet.

Since around the 1960s, companies have also been adding vitamin D into processed foods such as orange juice, flour, milk, and many other pre-packaged foods.

These fortified foods may not provide a full daily dose of vitamin D in and of themselves, but if nothing else, they can keep people from falling over the line into vitamin D deficiency, no matter how little sunlight they see.